


Side Effects May Include

by leftlanden



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-10
Updated: 2015-06-10
Packaged: 2018-04-03 17:37:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4109338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leftlanden/pseuds/leftlanden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Regina and Emma stop the trigger and save Storybrooke, Emma is feeling some unpleasant after effects from performing powerful magic.  Takes place after the Season 2 finale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Side Effects May Include

The ship lurched to the right and Emma thudded against the wall, shoulder first.

“Ow,” she grimaced, trying to shrug away the pain.

If Emma’s sea legs were somewhat underdeveloped when she’d first set foot on this ship, they were downright non-existent now that she’d had three shots of rum.

Luckily, she had been holding the bottle with her left hand, so it was unscathed. With a death grip around its neck just in case, she ascended the ladder and threw open the hatch above her, and emerged onto the deck of the Jolly Roger.

“Raiding the Captain’s private bar, love?” Hook called out to her from behind the wheel. “You should know I’ve sent men to watery graves for less.”

Emma took another swig from the bottle, meeting Hook’s gaze over the top of it. “Why aren’t we there yet?” she rasped, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “I thought the portal thing was supposed to be instantaneous.”

“Instantaneous, yes,” Hook explained, “But not entirely precise. We’re in the waters off Neverland. We still have to make it to land.”

“Well, hurry up.” She turned toward the bow of the ship. “I need to get off this thing,” she muttered.

Her parents huddled in the darkness to her left, shoulder to shoulder and deep in conversation. She turned to the right. She set the bottle at her feet and grabbed the rail with both hands, letting the spray splash her face. She took in a deep, shaky breath. Her legs trembled beneath her.

“You all right, Emma?”

She didn’t open her eyes as she replied to her father. “I’m fine.”

“Between the bottle of rum and the white knuckles, I’m not so sure that’s true,” he said with that too-smooth voice he tended to use when she was making him anxious.

“I’m just a little tense,” she answered. “We did just almost die. And I’m worried about Henry.”

“We’ll find him, Emma.” Snow put her hand over Emma’s.

“I know,” Emma sighed, withdrawing her hand and stooping to pick up the bottle. “It’s what you do.”

 _Picking up on social cues that say ‘leave me alone’ not so much,_ she thought.

She pushed between them and continued to the front of the ship, leaving her parents locked in a sincere, worried gaze.

She looked down and watched the hull cut through the angry water below. The alcohol was really hitting her blood now, which she could tell because her head now seemingly floated six feet in front of her body. It was possible she shouldn’t have treated Hook’s version of rum like it had a cartoon parrot on the bottle.

The boat lurched again and Emma grasped at the rails to keep her balance.

“Would you mind backing away from those rails, over there? We don’t exactly have time to stop and fish you out of the ocean. In case you forgot, we have a child to save.”

Emma turned up one corner of her mouth, but made sure to wipe it from her face before turning around. She took a few steps and the tip and heave of the boat did the rest, and eventually she wound up at the stack of wooden crates Regina was leaning against, knees drawn up to her chest. Emma flounced down next to her.

“Want a drink?” she asked, extending her arm.

Regina lifted her chin from her forearms, and looked witheringly at Emma. “I don’t drink that pirate swill.”

“You should,” Emma said, “It helps. At least, I’m convincing myself it does.”

“Helps with what? The annoying ability to stay on one’s feet?”

“With coping.”

“I’m coping just fine.”

Emma tried to make herself comfortable against the crates next to Regina. She fidgeted with the bottle in her hands, crossed and uncrossed her legs about seventeen times. Regina gazed straight ahead, thoroughly ignoring her.

“So what do you know about Neverland?” Emma asked after a moment.

“Not much,” Regina answered wearily. “I know it’s humid, it’s dark all the time, and it’s full of pimple-faced teenaged boys who have no adult supervision.”

“Sounds like a lot of the parties I went to about ten years ago.”

Regina closed her eyes. “Please refrain from providing details.”

Emma stared down at the bottle in her hand. “We’re about to have one of those, you know.”

“A frat party?”

“They weren’t frat -- never mind. I meant a pimple-faced teenaged boy. Kid’s growing like a weed; he’s been through three shoe sizes since I met him.”

“Trust me, I buy his comic books. I can no longer maintain denial about the nature of his fixation with Black Widow.”

Emma smirked, then sobered.

“You think we’re going to find him?”

“Of course we’re going to find him,” Regina answered before the question was even finished.

Emma looked at Regina, who stared out at the water, certainty set in her jaw.

“Are you sure you don’t want a drink? Come on, it’ll piss off Hook.”

“As soon as I no longer need his help to save my son, I have much bigger plans for that waste of mascara than using up a little of his alcohol.”

Emma, for her part, was indeed focusing on using up the alcohol. Regina scowled in her direction.

“You might want to go easy,” she said. “You’ll want a clear head while we’re traipsing through the forest in an hour or two.”

Emma set down the bottle and slid it away from her. “I know,” she sighed. “Problem is, I can’t calm down. I keep waiting for the rum to do the trick and it isn’t.”

“Well, relax. I told you, we’re going to find him.”

“I know, I believe you. I just feel… weird.”

“Weird,” Regina repeated. “All the specific and descriptive words in the English language, and you go with one that tells me almost nothing.”

“That’s because I can’t describe it,” Emma sighed again, shifting to face Regina. “I feel wired, on edge. I feel like --” she looked up at the sails, the sky, searching for the right words. “I feel like I’m exhausted, right? But I also feel like I could climb up to the top of those sails, jump off this boat, and fly to Neverland just by flapping my arms. It’s like I’ve got a runner’s high plus I got struck by lightning. Then like maybe I had a couple of shots of Cuervo and three venti coffees, and the coffee was spiked with just a _teeny_ bit of Ecstasy.”

Regina turned back to the view of the water. “I don’t know what any of those things are.”

Emma tried again. “It means I’m restless, I can’t stand still, and I want something but I don’t know what. It’s like I feel awful… but I’m happy about it.”

Recognition crept into Regina’s eyes, and Emma finally had her attention.

“It’s the magic,” she said.

“The magic?” Emma repeated. “Magic’s never made me feel like this before.”

“Maybe that’s because your ‘magic’ so far has been child’s play.”

Emma looked at Regina indignantly.

“Oh, please. A simple protection spell, or keeping your own heart in your chest? That’s nothing. When you helped me, when we stopped that trigger, that was far more powerful magic than you’ve ever used before. You weren’t ready for it.” She paused, some of the sharpness draining from her expression. “It used to happen to me, too. In the beginning.”

A look flickered across Regina’s face, and Emma thought it might be nostalgia.

“Well, how do I get rid of it?” she asked. “I’m kind of jumping out of my skin, here.”

“Have you tried meditation?”

“Seriously? I... don’t meditate. Any other ideas?”

“Repetition of simple spells can work to clear the excess magic out of your system. Levitating objects, igniting small flames, that sort of thing.”

“Yeah, I’ll just call upon my vast experience with all of that. Does anything work that I actually know how to do?”

“Well,” Regina half-smirked. “Presumably.”

“Then what is it? If I don’t calm down soon I’m going to jump off this boat and swim for shore.”

Regina stifled a smirk and spoke reluctantly. “The excess energy left by magic _can_ be channeled into other types of... physical release.”

Emma looked at her blankly. Regina waited.

“OH,” Emma said, eyes widening as it dawned on her. “Physical… oh uhh, okay.” She cleared her throat. “So you’re telling me I have to either learn to meditate on the spot, suddenly get good at magic, or have sex with someone? Those are my options?”

“The only ones I know of,” Regina replied. “But if you’re serious about it, I’m sure there’s someone on this ship who would be all too happy to oblige with option three. Though I suppose there’s no indication of his competency in solving your problem.”

Emma turned her head in horror toward the back of the ship where Hook controlled the wheel. She turned back to Regina.

“So those simple spells you were telling me about? Could you teach me real quick, do you think?”

***

Emma sat cross-legged on the deck of the ship and held the bottle of rum at arm’s length, its glass bottom flat against her palm. She pierced it with a stare from narrowed eyes. Regina faced her, her eyes reflecting the weariness inflicted by the day. But she instructed Emma in an even voice -- stern, but tinged, Emma thought (was it possible?) with hopefulness.

“Clear your mind of everything but the task at hand,” Regina said. “The rum _will_ boil. It has no choice, because you will make it so.”

Long seconds filled with nothing crept by. Emma shifted her weight side to side, adjusted her grip on the bottle.

“Focus, don’t fidget,” Regina chided. “The energy is inside you. Move it to the liquid in your hand.”

Emma slowed her breathing. The swirl of the alcohol in her brain was distracting.

“Envision what you expect to happen,” Regina intoned. “And _understand_ that it will, because you want it to.”

Emma closed her eyes and let her thoughts drain away. For a moment, there was nothing but the grey behind her eyes.

She opened them again when she felt the bottle in her hand begin to vibrate. Inside, tiny bubbles formed where the bottle contacted her hand and rose in furious little streams to the top.

“Holy cow!” she exclaimed. “Regina, it’s working!”

Regina was opening her mouth to tell Emma to keep her emotions even, to keep her focus on draining the magic from herself into the bottle. But Emma, in her (drunken) exuberance, reached out her hand in excitement.

And when Emma’s hand made contact with Regina’s knee, the rum in the bottle went from the effervescence of a pleasant sparkling wine to a violent, rolling boil. It rose up the neck, spilled out of the mouth, cascaded onto Emma’s arm, and splashed onto the boards below. Emma yelped and jumped to her feet, as a surge of heat pulsed through her body. Her cheeks flushed. Reaching up, she half-expected to find her hair standing on end.

“What the hell was that?” she panted, staring down at Regina in disbelief. “Did you feel that?”

“No, I just slid backward across this deck because I wanted to get splinters in delicate places,” Regina retorted from about six feet away. “Yes, Emma, I felt it.”

“That was like, heat, or electricity or something,” Emma said in wonder, staring at the nearly-empty bottle in her hand. “Is this normal?”

“Well I’ve never tried to use magic to boil a bottle of rum before, but I think it’s safe to say no. This is not normal.”

“Our magic, it must have compounded again,” Emma said. “It happened when I touched you.”

Regina rolled her eyes to heaven as she got to her feet. “Yes, those brilliant powers of deduction are what make you such a fine sheriff.”

“Can we try it again?” Emma asked. “Maybe it’ll, you know, discharge me.”

“Given that combining our powers is what caused the problem in the first place, it’s more likely that it’ll make you worse. I really don’t think we need to pursue this experiment any further, Miss Swan.”

“But… it was kind of awesome.”

“If by awesome you mean it was a novelty party trick with some painful side effects,” Regina said, keeping her distance a few feet away from Emma. “If we ever get back to Granny’s, I’m sure it’ll entertain the peasants. Now give me a minute to think of a different spell to teach you. From across the ship a safe distance.”

“Fine,” Emma said, sulking, and turned away.

But the ship was hitting rough waters, and it disrupted their plan to put distance between them.

“Hang on, mates!” Hook called out, as the Jolly Roger turned sharply to avoid a high breaking wave. It was insufficient warning. The ship pitched sharply left and Emma stumbled, landing squarely on her ass. And as Hook steered sharply to the right to regain the ship’s balance, Regina lost hers, landing directly in the space already occupied by a too uncoordinated to get out of the way Emma Swan.

“Uuuunnggh,” Emma grunted, as Regina landed shoulder-first on her abdomen.

“Son of a--” Regina muttered.

Buzzing, tingling waves, like when your foot starts to regain blood after it’s been asleep for an hour, Emma thought, radiated through her body, spreading outward from everywhere she and Regina accidentally made contact as they struggled to get to their feet.

Regina must’ve felt it, too. “Emma, let go of the--” she began to say. Emma, who hadn’t even realized she still gripped the bottle of rum, released her grasp, but it was too late.

Starting where it had contacted Emma’s hand, network of tiny cracks spread over the glass bottle. It gave Emma just enough warning to wrap her arms around Regina and roll her over toward the rails of ship before the bottle exploded. Broken glass rained down over them, and the remnants of the rum that had been inside it.

As the tap-tap of falling glass faded away, Emma and Regina sat up. Emma ignored the audience they had drawn, and the chorus of “Are you okay?” from her parents. Rumple, momentarily startled out of his furious brooding, turned away in annoyed indifference.

“I don’t know what’s going on over there, but you owe me a bottle of rum,” Hook warned, “Or you best find another way to make it up to me.”

“Ugh, I smell like the floor of a roach-infested, cheap pirate saloon,” Regina said in disgust, picking herself up off of the boards once more.

“Judging by its strength, I think that rum was actually pretty expensive,” Emma said, also standing. “Here, don’t move, let me get the glass out of your hair.”

“I can do it myself,” Regina said, and stepped backwards.

“Don’t be stubborn, Regina,” Emma said. “You don’t have a mirror. I can see your hair, you can’t.”

“Is it not clear to you yet that it’s not a good idea for you to be touching me right now?”

“The bottle’s already exploded, there’s no more harm to be done,” Emma insisted.

“Not the case,” Regina replied, and turned her face away from Emma.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Emma asked, puzzled. “What other harm could there be?”

A beat passed before Regina answered, “Well, maybe you don’t mind being periodically electrocuted, Miss Swan, but I do.”

Emma narrowed her eyes, examining Regina’s expression. “That’s not it. What aren’t you telling me, Regina?”

Regina turned back to Emma, her eyes filled with the simmering anger Emma was so familiar with by now that it had pretty much lost all meaning. “I am trying to prevent any further damage,” was all she would say. “Now _back off_ and let me figure out how to fix you so you’re not completely useless in the hellhole we’re about to land in.”

Emma, unsatisfied, determined to understand, and emboldened by ethanol, caught Regina’s wrist as she turned to walk away.

“Regina, please,” Emma said, as her hand warmed from fingertips to wrist. “You may not think much of my magical abilities, but I have them, and they’re affecting me. At least treat me like a grown up. What do you know?”

Regina’s eyes blazed as she looked from Emma’s hand on her wrist to Emma’s face. “You need to be more careful,” she hissed, “Because sometimes when people perform magic together, there are… unintended… there can be... ”

As Regina stumbled over her words, trying to find the least awkward way to explain herself, Emma began to feel the tension in her body stir. A faraway look came over her face as the the formerly unidentifiable, excited restlessness that had plagued her for hours now was converging into one -- much more familiar -- sensation.

“...side effects,” she whispered, completing Regina’s sentence. She dropped Regina’s wrist and stared at her in dismay, though what she was feeling was something else entirely.

***

Emma lay on the floor of Hook’s below-deck quarters. (She could not bring herself to go anywhere near his bunk.)

“Fucking magic,” she cursed under her breath. _Magic comes with a price_ , they said. Well, they never mentioned this one, and Emma now squarely resented never being given the chance to opt out.

But okay, this was fine, she told herself. At least what she was feeling now was familiar, even if the object of the feeling was messing with her, to put it mildly. At least she didn’t feel like flying, or imploding, or doing crazy science-magic experiments with very explodable bottles of rum. She just felt like.... well. You know.

Well, that would go away, she supposed. Uncomfortable as she was, she tried to fall asleep. How on Earth (wait, were they even on Earth?) was she still awake after all that rum? If she could just sleep, her blood should all go back in circulation where it was supposed to be when she woke up. And her thoughts, well, when she woke up they would presumably not revolve around the glisten of sweat on the skin of Regina’s chest in the humid night air. Which was, she couldn’t help but recall, a thing that existed just a few feet above her, right at this very moment.

“Is it… is it both of us?” she had asked Regina, after Emma had realized what she was feeling, and after Regina had realized that Emma had realized.

Regina, to her credit, had been tactful. She cleared her throat. “When the magic is uneven, Emma,” she’d said quietly, “So can be the effects. It’s not under anyone’s control how it manifests.”

“Great,” Emma had muttered, and retreated hastily to save herself the humiliation of asking Regina if she was really, really, absolutely sure it was totally one-sided.

“Ugghh, this is ridiculous,” Emma finally concluded, sitting up and stomping to Hook’s washroom. She latched the door shut and unzipped her pants.

She would just take care of it. It wasn’t like this was an unsolvable problem, after all, no matter how bizarre the cause. She leaned face-first against the door, right arm above her head supporting her, and worked her fingers inside her underwear.

In the beginning she fought the unwanted images of Regina’s body writhing under her touch. When she gave up doing that, reminding herself that it was magic, it was just magic, she came easily. Afterward, she breathed shaky sighs of relief.

She splashed cold water on her face to take away the telltale flush in her skin, washed her hands, and opened the door, emerging into Hook’s bedchamber feeling almost like she could get a little sleep before they made landfall.

But a few steps outside the door, she froze in her tracks. “Oh no,” she murmured. A rush of heat radiated through her body and settled in right.. well, right where she’d just gotten rid of it. Her lower abdomen ached painfully, cried out for release like she hadn’t been touched in months. She brushed her hand lightly between her legs and felt fire. “No, no, no,” she said. “Why is this happening?” She crumpled to the floor.

It was then that light came streaming in, as someone opened the hatch from above. Emma looked up to see Regina’s (fucking perfectly formed, god damn it) legs descending gingerly down the stairs.

“I trust by now you’ve realized there’s nothing you can do on your own to solve your problem,” she said matter-of-factly as she entered the room.

Emma cradled her head in her hands, in too much turmoil to feel the full weight of the embarrassment of it all. “Yuuup.”

“Lucky for you,” Regina continued, “I’m here to help.”

Emma’s head snapped upward. “Help?”

“Calm down,” Regina said, taking a small black cosmetics bag out of her purse. “I mean with magic.”

Emma exhaled sharply. “What is it?”

Regina held up a small vial filled to the top with a turquoise liquid. “It’s a calming potion. It’s made to relax any over-excitement in the body. And as much as I don’t actually care about your problems, I need you sharp to help me find Henry.”

“I don’t even care why, that’s the best news I’ve ever heard. Why didn’t you just give this to me in the first place?”

“It’s supposed to be for emergencies,” Regina said, exasperated. “Things like panic attacks, seizures, anaphylactic shock. Not… this.” She waved her hand dismissively in Emma’s direction.

Emma snatched it from Regina’s hand and downed it.

“Oh my God, that tastes worse than Hook’s rum,” she choked, face scrunched to unrecognizable proportions.

“You don’t want to know what’s in it,” Regina replied. “So, feeling better?”

Emma shifted around a bit, evaluating. She squeezed together her thigh muscles and her eyes rolled back in her head. Full of dread, she looked up at Regina.

“Please tell me it takes a few minutes,” she said.

“It hasn’t worked?” Regina asked, her voice rising just a little.

“Uhh, no. Was it the wrong potion?”

Regina scoffed. “I’m not an amateur.”

“Well _something_ went wrong.”

They stood in silence, Regina’s brow furrowed in thought, Emma in a mild panic that whatever she’d just ingested was a potion for amnesia, or metamorphosis into a hermit crab, or something like that.

She checked her hands for signs of turning into claws.

“It’s me,” Regina said finally. “I’d sincerely hoped it wouldn’t come to this.”

“It’s you? What’s you?”

“The magic you did, the magic that you weren’t ready for, it’s too tied in with me. That’s why drinking the potion didn’t work on you.”

“So, what does that mean, you have to drink the potion too?”

“That _might_ work. Perhaps we should have shared it. But unfortunately you didn’t wait for us to discuss our options, and I can’t exactly carry around multiple doses of every possible potion in the world.”

“So… so what do we do?”

Regina put her hands over her face. “Well first, Miss Swan, you need to show me where Killian Jones keeps his rum.”

***

“Your body underwent magic that it wasn’t ready to handle,” Regina explained, face contorted in disgust after downing a little, and then a little more, of the reviled pirate swill. “Most of that magic came from me. That’s why although it’s happening to you, it manifests outwardly when we make physical contact. And it’s the reason for your… hormonal fascination, if you will,” she said, side-eyeing Emma. “It’s like the flow of electricity. As far as the magic is concerned, we’re the same wire.”

Emma swiped the bottle from Regina’s hand, deciding she deserved just a little more.

“Unfortunately for both of us, as much as I hoped we could get around it, that’s why I’m the only one who can fix it. It has to be a completed circuit.”

Emma shook her head in hopes it would rattle this information into place. “Do they teach you this in Evil Queen school?” she asked. “How do you know all this?”

Regina said nothing, but took another drink from the bottle and gave Emma a look over the top of it.

“Who- who did you do magic with? Who helped you?” Emma asked, realizing what that look meant. “Oh God, Regina, please don’t say Rumplestiltskin.”

“I won’t name names, but let’s just say… she was never a dragon at the time. Now. Shall we get this over with?”

***

Emma sat on the floor with her back against the wall. Regina knelt at her side.

“You have to be touching me, so take my hand. I need the other one for the magic.”

“For once in this situation, that’s not even a euphemism,” Emma said, and giggled at herself as she slid her hand into Regina’s.

“Shhhhh,” Regina said, and with a flick of her wrist, the laughter evaporated from Emma’s throat. A pulsing golden glow radiated from Regina’s hand and spread to envelop Emma’s body.

“Okay, all business. Okay, oh my God,” Emma breathed as the heat crept up inside of her, slowly radiating inward from her extremities to one, concentrated point. “Oh my God, this is weird.” She looked at Regina in dismay.

“Focus,” Regina whispered. She waved her palm over Emma’s face, and Emma’s eyes closed. Regina moved her hand down Emma’s body and hovered over her lower abdomen. Emma’s stomach muscles tensed. Her head fell backward and she clutched at the fabric of her shirt with the hand not squeezing Regina’s.

The golden glow pulsed warmly, steadily beneath Regina’s hand, and the pleasure built inside of Emma, slowly becoming intense enough to displace the nerves and awkwardness she felt. Jaw dropped open, she sank to the floor.

Regina adjusted to follow her, leaning forward over Emma. And as Emma’s eyes flickered open to see Regina above her, she moaned.

“Sorry,” she whispered, embarrassed. She had been trying not to make it any weirder, holding it back by biting her tongue, stifling it in a situation where normally her feelings would be escaping her throat. Regina drew an arc in the air above them.

“Noise cancellation,” she explained, and took Emma’s hand again.

“Thank you,” Emma breathed in relief, not so much because she cared who heard her above deck, but because Regina had heard it without so much as flinching.

So she relaxed a little. It was strange to have no sense of friction, no dynamic motion to associate with the feeling of a building orgasm. There was a wonderful stillness to it. She could feel herself breathing, sweating, could feel the muscles in her thighs shaking. Regina’s presence was warm above her, and encompassing, but not intrusive. She reached up and touched her face with a trembling hand.

She drew it back right away, reminding herself that no matter what she was feeling at Regina’s hand, this was a one-sided deal. “Sorry,” she whimpered again, closed her eyes.

“Emma,” Regina said quietly. “Your reactions are natural. Focus inward.”

Emma nodded, grimacing. She reached her hand up and placed it on the side of Regina’s neck, and heat surged through her. Regina’s breath caught in her throat; Emma didn’t miss that.

The warm golden glow brightened, and its rhythm quickened.

“Mmmmphhph,” Emma moaned again, throwing her head from one side to the other, stretching her legs out and drawing them back toward her body. Despite previous assurances, she pressed her lips together to keep from calling out Regina’s name.

And then her peak was upon her, and she said it anyway. “Re-- Regina,” she choked out.

The purest relief she had ever felt flooded through her as her climax hit her, sharp, deep. She breathed into the waves and waited for them to fall, to recede.

Except they didn’t. Emma’s body continued to shake with effort and shudder with pleasure. She couldn’t speak, but blinked up at Regina, trying to understand. Regina looked down at her, met her gaze, concentration furrowed on her brow.

“I can make it last,” she whispered, effort straining her voice.

Understanding now what Regina was doing and stripped of any capacity to hold back, Emma grasped clumsily at Regina and brought her down on top of her. Her mouth found Regina’s and desperately kissed her, her nails found the skin of Regina’s back under several layers of clothes. Regina’s hand, formerly so strategically placed in midair, made contact in all the commotion, and Emma wrapped her thighs around it.

She gasped into Regina’s mouth, and Regina closed her eyes, and did not let up, did not stop the rush of electricity she was sending to Emma’s insides.

But magic or not, human muscles have limits, and Emma’s eventually met theirs. She collapsed, arms splayed to the sides, chest heaving. As she blinked in exhaustion up at the ceiling, a tear fell from each eye.

Released from Emma’s grasp, Regina sat up. She breathed heavily but wiped the lipstick from her chin, straightened her hair. Emma noted that she’d never seen the queen look quite so… human. She wouldn’t look at Emma. Emma, on the other hand, found that she couldn’t look away.

“Regina,” Emma said gently, when her breathing returned to normal. Regina startled and looked at her, looking slightly stricken. “Why?” Emma asked her.

“Why what? Why was I thorough? I’m a professional. When I do magic, I make sure the job is done. You’re welcome, by the way.” Regina had steeled her expression, but her voice was shaking.

“Thank you,” Emma said, a pained smile on her face. It was probably the sincerest thanks she had ever given. “So that was just all business, then?” she asked. “Because I have to say, it felt a little personal.”

“Of course it felt personal, given the nature of the spell,” Regina said, but stared down at her hands. “Though it’s possible I got a bit… carried away. I may be experienced, but I’m not completely unaffected by performing magic.”

“I can see that, actually,” Emma said.

Regina followed Emma’s gaze, looking down at her abdomen. The golden glow of the magic Regina had used hung in a faint mist around her lower body.

She looked up at Emma, a detectable amount of sheepishness in her eyes. “I guess it isn’t finished with me yet,” she said.

Emma swallowed. “Does it have to be me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Has this happened before? With-- you know?”

Regina shook her head.

“Regina,” Emma said quietly. “Do you _want_ it to be me?”

In that moment, Regina was relieved to remember Emma’s superpower, because it meant she didn’t have to actually say words for Emma to know the answer to that question.

“But, you don’t have magic,” Regina said. “At least, you can’t wield it like that.”

“You’re right,” Emma said, smiling reassuringly at Regina. “I guess I’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way. But trust me, Regina,” she said, pulling Regina close. “I do have _that_ kind of magic.”


End file.
